Re: Perlin and simplex noise

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 1:57 AM, Erik Dahlstrom <ed@opera.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:51:32 +0200, David Dailey <ddailey@zoominternet.net>
>> wrote:
>>> I know you all found the concepts of declarative randomness a bit
>>> distasteful (we're giving a talk on it at the conference in Switzerland,
>>> soon) and given the history of society's reaction to randomness, one can
>>> perhaps understand if not appreciate that reaction.
>>>
>>>
>>> However, I wondered if thought has been given to Simplex noise in addition
>>> to Perlin noise[1]?
>>
>>
>> Some thought has gone into that[2], but there's no concrete proposal for it
>> yet. It's listed as issue 15 in the filter draft [3].
>>
>> I would like to see a more hardware friendly noise algorithm in the spec,
>> e.g simplex noise (or something with the same characteristics), but if we
>> want existing content to look the same we can't just switch the algorithm in
>> feTurbulence since the algorithm in the spec and the simplex algorithm
>> generate slightly different results. But, it may well be that the
>> differences are small enough that it would be acceptable, anyhow I think
>> that needs to be investigated.
>>
>> What do other people think? The computational cost of the noise algorithm in
>> SVG 1.1 is fairly high, and that does limit what you can use it for in
>> practice. If we chose to go for a new noise algorithm I would also like to
>> be able to animate the noise continously (I think this means we'd need the
>> 3d version of the algorithm). That is, I'd like to simulate say fire or
>> smoke, and link the z dimension in the noise algorithm to the time dimension
>> so that the animation is continous (without strange gaps and without it
>> looking like the result is scrolled along either or both of the x and
>> y-axis).
>
> I *strongly* suggest that we make this decision in concert with
> relevant browser devs, so we can get something that's legitimately
> implementable by them.  I definitely support a decent-quality, fast
> noise algorithm, because I desperately want noise usable in CSS.  ^_^

Why not through custom shaders?
<https://github.com/ashima/webgl-noise>
<https://github.com/ashima/webgl-noise/wiki>

The above is compatible with WebGL (GLSL ES 1.0) and is purely
functional (no uniforms, arrays, textures, external state, &c).
Classic Perlin and simplex noise are provided in 2, 3, and 4
dimensions under the MIT (expat) license.

> (While we're at it, though, we should pay attention to how it would be
> possible to do declarative randomness in properties.  Marrying a
> stateful RNG with a nominally stateless language is hard. :/ )

Procedural noise can be seeded from time alone. I believe that CSS
transitions should be able to provide custom shaders with a fractional
completeness value, no? Is there a means in New CSS to create
unbounded animation?

David Sheets

> ~TJ
>

Received on Friday, 31 August 2012 20:49:52 UTC